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As WP's managing editor, I edit review and preview articles, attempt to keep up with the frantic pace of Rainier's news posts, and keep our reviewers on deadline, which is akin to herding cats. When I have a moment to myself and don't have my nose in a book, I like to play action/RPG, adventure and platforming games.

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'City of Villains' to Use AGEIA Physics

City of Villains is an expansion to NCsoft's MMORPG City of Heroes, set in the Rogue Isles, a treacherous region not far from Paragon City. Players can now build their criminal empires and spread their own reign of terror.

The new game release is the result of an ongoing partnership between AGEIA and Cryptic, in which both companies combine their considerable talent and expertise to take games to a new level of interactivity and realism. According to a source code license agreement with AGEIA, Cryptic Studios will be using AGEIA's NovodeX physics software as their core physics engine for upcoming games such as City of Villains.

Published by NCsoft and scheduled for Fall release, City of Villains has been eagerly anticipated by fans of the award-winning and hugely popular City of Heroes MMO game. While the two game worlds are interactive, City of Villains is a standalone game offering brand new archetypes with new types of powers, as well as physics-based effects and environments that can be hardware accelerated with the AGEIA PhysX processor. Such effects include large rigid body simulations, fluids, physical particle systems, and other complex physics implementations that are radically accelerated with dedicated physics hardware.

"Cryptic Studios is very excited about AGEIA's physics technology. Once gamers experience this level of immersion it will quickly become a must-have feature," said Michael Lewis, CEO of Cryptic Studios.

"City of Villains is a fantastic game experience and a great introduction to the capabilities of AGEIA physics technology," said Andy Keane, vice president of marketing for AGEIA. "With this powerful technology in the hands of a talented development team such as Cryptic Studios, we're only beginning to explore the possibilities of physics in next-generation games."

AGEIA will be demonstrating games using AGEIA PhysX technology at E3, by appointment only.